Brian Maclaren- A Generous Orthodoxy or dangerous neo-liberalism?

Challies Review of – A Generous Orthodoxy. This review really lays down the guantlet. Challies quotes the back cover of hte book which states that Brian Maclaren “argues for a post-liberal, post-conservative, post-protestant convergence that will stimulate lively interest and global conversation among thoughtful Christians from all traditions.” Whilst I have never read the book this is exactly what I mean by neo-liberalism.

“In short, it is awful. I consider it, in terms of content, one of the worst I have ever read and it stands as damning evidence of what passes for Christian reading in our day. Though it was easy to read, and even enjoyable at times, throughout the text Brian McLaren has consistently, deliberately and systematically dismantled historical Protestantism. From Sola Scriptura to hell to biblical inerrancy, nothing is sacred. At this point, those who are devotees of McLaren, The Emergent Church and post-modernism, will no doubt already have felt their blood boil and will be ready for a fight. I would encourage those people to keep reading. Those who are more traditional Christians will be grappling with an all-too-familiar feeling that this book represents yet another attack on the faith. And that is exactly what this book is. The remainder of this review will concern itself with showing how this book does away with biblical faith, replacing it with something far less godly and far more human. In short, something that is simply not Christianity.

It is difficult to critique the writing of people like McLaren because discerning what they actually believe is far more difficult than finding what they do not believe. Settling on those beliefs is akin to nailing Jello to the wall – it is a near impossible task as the Jello has no consistent form or shape, always changing, always conforming to what contains it. We are often left to read between the lines, interpreting what the author believes in light of what he rejects…….

He teaches false, anti-biblical doctrine throughout this book. The faith of Brian McLaren is not the faith of the Bible and only bears the most vague resemblance to Christianity.

So then, as seems to happen often in the blogosphere (maybe because somewhere someone is thinking similarly to you!) this issue seems to be coming to the fore in a number of blogs. Are the Emerging Christians dangerous heretics or are they the future for the church? Lets discuss this in the interconnected tangle that blogging does best.